A number of non-cartel antitrust infringements remain crimes under US law, even if they are not prosecuted in practice. This article, available here, deals with the implications of recent claims for increased antitrust enforcement for the application of such provisions. A natural extension of enforcement would be to advocate the use of criminal sanctions for various antitrust violations outside of collusion which are “on the books” but have not been used in over a generation. The article argues that a return to the criminalisation of non-collusion related antitrust abuses is problematic not only as a matter of optimal deterrence, but also unconstitutional as a matter of law. Section one describes how antitrust criminalisation is a form of achieving deterrence. Antitrust enforcement builds on models of optimal deterrence. Under an optimal deterrence antitrust framework, a firm or individual will be deterred where the expected costs of illegal activity, taking into account the probability of detection and magnitude of the penalties, exceed…

This paper, available here , discusses the first deportation of an EU citizen to the US for competition law infringements. It focuses on a recent judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union on this matter. A first section outlines the factual background of the case. In 2010, a US arrest warrant was issued for Italian businessman Romano Pisciotti on account of his involvement in the marine hoses cartel. In 2013, the German federal police arrested Mr. Pisciotti at Frankfurt Airport during a stopover of his flight from Nigeria to Italy. He was provisionally detained and, a few months later, the German authorities accepted the US request for extradition despite Mr. Pisciotti’s legal appeals, inter alia before the German Federal Constitutional Court. Other extradition requests from the US authorities had so far been unsuccessful, mainly because most international extradition agreements (including the Treaty between Germany and the US) require that the sanctioned conduct must be a crime in…

In addition to rising monetary fines against both companies and individuals, over the last ten years more than thirty countries have decided to criminalise cartel activities. At the same time, and despite the growing number of countries opting for a criminal enforcement, the implementation of such measures has been quite deficient outside the US. Many of these countries have encountered procedural and political obstacles to enforcing criminal provisions against anticompetitive conduct, including a lack of support from key players in the enforcement process. Among the main explanations for this state of affairs is a belief that criminalisation of cartels outside the US is often the product of a top-down process led by transnational enforcement interests rather than domestic bottom-up forces. The aim of this article, available here, is to test this explanation by conducting an empirical study of criminalisation efforts in Chile. The study involved interviews with the main stakeholders who took part in the criminalisation process in Chile, such…

As opposed to other types of market conduct (such as, e.g., vertical distribution agreements or the unilateral use of market power), cartels are widely perceived to have few if any redeeming features. In recent years, one can clearly detect a firm commitment from antitrust enforcers around the globe to pursue rigorously the investigation, detection and prosecution of cartel activity. Aligned with this development is a growing tendency in a wide variety of jurisdictions to hold individuals accountable for the creation and implementation of cartels, including through use of criminal law. Unfortunately, the employment of criminal cartel sanctions is not without its problems. This paper, available here, seeks to evaluate some inherent problems associated with the use of criminal sanctions for cartel conduct to deter anticompetitive behaviour. It is structured as follows: Section B outlines the deterrence-based justification for criminal cartel sanctions. The primary rationale for the criminal cartel sanctions is economic deterrence. Unlike retribution, deterrence does not concern itself with…

A growing number of jurisdictions treat ‘hard-core’ cartel conduct as crime, in the belief that the threat of incarceration is necessary for deterrence. For many years, the US was the only active criminal cartel enforcement regime in the world. Cartels were first prohibited under the US Sherman Act 1890 as misdemeanours, and became a felony in 1974. The US Department of Justice regularly secures convictions of firms and individuals – many of whom agree to serve custodial sentences under negotiated plea agreements – from around the world. In the past 20 years, there has been an international movement towards the US model. Around 25 jurisdictions have criminalised ‘hard-core’ cartel conduct, including the UK, France, Ireland and Australia – with many more having adopted criminal offences that relate only to bid-rigging in public procurement. Most of these jurisdictions have chosen to retain their civil enforcement powers in parallel, so as to use criminal enforcement selectively. However, there is still disagreement over…

This piece is similar to last week’s papers in that if focuses on the challenges posed by algorithmic tacit collusion, but arguably goes further. In previous work, the authors outlined four scenarios where algorithms may be used to facilitate collusion. There is a consensus that their first two scenarios – Messenger, where algorithms help humans collude; and Hub and Spoke, where a common intermediary provides the algorithm and the pricing decision mechanism that could facilitate collusion – pose competition issues that should be addressed under existing rules. Their third and fourth scenarios have proved more controversial. Under the third scenario, called Tacit Collusion on Steroids – The Predictable Agent, companies could unilaterally use algorithms with the intent to facilitate conscious parallelism (also known as tacit collusion). Under the fourth scenario, called Artificial Intelligence, God View, and the Digital Eye, algorithms may arrive at this anticompetitive outcome on their own. Tacit collusion is beyond the reach of the competition laws of…

The Monopolies Commission is a permanent, independent expert committee which advises the German government and legislature as regards competition policy-making, competition law and regulation. The chapter is already one year old, and can be accessed here. In data-intensive sectors such of the digital economy, pricing algorithms can facilitate collusion by automating collusive behaviour. For example, algorithms can stabilise collusion by allowing the collection of information on competitors’ prices and sanctioning deviations from collusive market outcomes more quickly. The use of pricing algorithms can also render explicit anticompetitive agreements or concerted practices dispensable. As a result, difficulties with determining whether a concerted practice is actually taking place will increase with the use of pricing algorithms. The Monopolies Commission considers that the use of pricing algorithms makes it necessary to strengthen market monitoring through sector inquiries. Since consumer associations are most likely to have indications of collusive overpricing, the Monopolies Commission recommends that consumer associations obtain the right to initiate competition sector…

Algorithmic pricing is not new, but newer software programs are much more “autonomous” than their precursors. Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), pricing algorithms can develop their pricing strategies from scratch, engaging in active experimentation and adapting to the evolving environment. In this learning process, they require little or no external guidance. Taken together with the diffusion and evolution of pricing algorithms, these developments raise various issues for competition policy, particularly as regards tacit collusion. While so far no one has brought an antitrust case against autonomously colluding algorithms, antitrust agencies are discussing the problem seriously. In addition to the OECD, competition authorities in the US, Canada and UK have held roundtable or issued papers on the topic. This paper, available here, tries to understand whether tacit collusion arising from AI should be a real concern by looking, for the first time, at the emergence of collusive strategies among autonomous pricing algorithms. It takes an experimental approach, by constructing AI pricing agents and…

Current technological developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have added further complexity to the discussion of whether, in the absence of overt communications, mere tacit coordination between competitors should be outlawed. Whereas some commentators argue that the dangers posed by AI should tip the balance towards making tacit coordination illegal, there are others who are either not entirely persuaded of the plausibility of such dangers or who point out that a competition rule focusing on mere inter-firm interdependence is not administrable. This paper, available here, reviews this debate with a view to establishing whether successful price coordination achieved by self-learning algorithms should be punishable under EU competition law, and whether the current regulatory framework is suitable. Section 2 explains how AI relates to antitrust. AI is expected to arise from certain types of software algorithms. An algorithm is merely a specified sequence of steps for producing a solution to a problem. Software is a composition of individual algorithms…

This piece, available here, surveys the interaction between competition and public procurement law in Europe. It is structured as follows: Section II looks at recent examples of competition enforcement against bid rigging. Competition law enforcement in public procurement settings remains a top enforcement priority for competition authorities in Europe. This is not only clear in the practice of the European Commission, but is also demonstrated by a continuous string of cases brought all over Europe. Recent examples of this can be found in Poland (car towing and parking services), Belgium (railway infrastructure), Latvia (security services, distribution of professional stage equipment), Ireland (retail distribution), Greece (construction), Italy (consulting services), Lithuania (construction), Denmark (construction, passenger transportation), Romania (electricity consumption equipment), or Spain (advertising services). A continued focus on competition enforcement against bid-rigging seems adequate, given the continued trend towards less competitive tenders for public contracts over the last decade or so—in part, as a result of procurement aggregation strategies, but also as a result…